The Hamsa Bird

To see beyond the apparent requires the discriminating awareness of the hamsa bird, a mythical creature that has a unique talent. If milk and water are mixed together, the bird can extract the milk from the mixture, and then can extract the sweetness from the milk.

In nondual traditions, the term used to describe the discriminating awareness within us is buddhi. It’s important to realize that we can access this level of consciousness — one that is free from the constraint of only seeing the appearance of duality. Buddhi can be understood as vimarśa, or self-reflective capacity. In its highest sense, this is the capacity of God’s infinite Consciousness to know Itself as Consciousness. And, since we are never separate from God’s awareness, we are also able to know ourselves as that same Consciousness. However, to have this level of realization, we first need to know our own state. Buddhi provides the ability to recognize where we are functioning from in ourselves and how we are expressing that in our actions. Then, we can choose to find a deeper state of consciousness and learn how to express that in our lives.

This growth requires the willingness to choose and function from something deeper than our mind and emotions, which do not have any capacity to penetrate through the apparent conditions in life. There is a tyranny of conditionality that dominates our awareness, limiting our perception of the joy inherent in God’s Consciousness.

When we can only see what’s right in front of us, we perpetually interact with our life as something “out there,” and the conditions we face then dominate our experience. Our decision (and let’s be clear, it is a decision) to live in the tyranny of those conditions is what determines our experience. We free ourselves from that tyranny by using the God-given discriminating awareness of buddhi, which enables us to see what is limiting our experience, and, once we see that, to choose to find a deeper place inside, one that is not be bound by any conditions.

If you truly desire to know your highest Self, you must free yourself from the need to change the conditions in your life. Stop thinking anything needs to change in order to find freedom. It’s a losing battle in the sense that we’re perpetually trying to be richer or poorer, more or less famous, have a new partner or get rid of our current one — and the list goes on. We are engaged in an ongoing, dynamic battle of us trying to change our experience by changing conditions, so we must be willing to simply go inside and see beyond the apparent, and to not believe our own experience.

What! I Shouldn’t Believe My Own Experience?

There is no denying that there are conditions in our life that we do not like, but our experience of them is determined by our state of consciousness. We must have the willingness to penetrate through our own limited perception to discover that there is no condition outside of ourselves, period. If that seems too unknowable, at least understand that there is no condition outside of ourselves that we should allow to diminish our own inner awareness.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we do. As we get caught in the challenging dynamics of life, life becomes out of balance. We project our consciousness outward — away from an expanded inner state, and out into the turmoil of the experience we’re having. We allow the conditions of externality to diminish the unconditioned, joyful state of unified consciousness within us. When this become our pattern, it shows up as the incessant need we have for safety and certainty. There is no certainty in this life: when we find ourselves facing adversity, we must be stronger than that adversity.

That starts from freeing ourselves from the misunderstanding that the conditions of our life are what determine our own consciousness. When you face a real challenge, it can either put you in a state of total debilitating, paralyzed, non-functionality, or it can become what frees you — because you become bigger than that adversity. The tyranny of conditionality is run by the dictator of the mind. Depose the dictator. Be very suspect of what you fundamentally believe: that life must change in order for you to be happy, and that life must be different in order to experience fullness and abundance.

The Conditions of Life Can Free Us

Thinking that something outside us can steal our consciousness only perpetuates the belief of being separate from the Divine — that two different things exist: us and that. This belief is what keeps us bound in duality, and then we allow our daily experience to reinforce that misunderstanding. We give away our inherent inner fullness in the face of those conditions that are, in fact, the projection of our own consciousness! They are the very dynamics that we are creating from within ourselves to free us of our ingrained tension and limitation.

We must use the discriminating capacity of buddhi to choose whether we are bound by the challenges of our life or are freed by them: whether we are weakened or made stronger by them. Get over the idea that life should be easy. Usually when things are easy we just get lazy. Instead, choose to find stillness and awareness in yourself in the very moment you are not established in that fullness, and especially when you feel you don’t have the strength to look for it or find it.

Ultimately, spiritual life is not about changing, but about being changed. Understand the distinction. Nobody wants to change! We don’t believe that we can be free — and we dig in and reinforce that belief. And furthermore, we continue to be bound by condition because we allow those conditions to prove that we’re not free. Have the strength and courage to change, to allow a deeper unfolding of the grace of God that is trying to awaken in you and show you your true Self. Our discriminating awareness allows us to choose to grow, to choose to be free and to be changed, even when it costs a little bit. The price that we pay for not being changed is suffering. 

Life can be hard, and it sometimes hurts a lot. But the gift of spiritual life is learning that we can always allow a deeper consciousness to reveal itself, and this will only happen if we discover inner abundance on a moment-by-moment basis. There is just one condition that we need to be freed of, and that is the constraint of the mind and emotions, which are simply tools to perpetuate the ego’s belief that we are separate from God. We will never change the ego, and we don’t need to. What we must do is use our discriminating capacity to free ourselves from the tyranny of that misunderstanding by changing the place of consciousness we function from. This is the essence of sādhana.